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Beer Review: Cigar City’s Hopped on the High Seas Calypso

Hopped on the High Seas from Cigar City is a year round release they call their Carribean Style IPA. Each batch is dry hopped with a different hop variety, for this review I have the batch dry hopped with Calypso. In the past I have enjoyed the batches with Simcoe and Kohatu, sorry no reviews on those. They brew the IPA at the Cervezas del Sur Brewery in Ponce, Puerto Rico and they dry hop it before it gets shipped back to Tampa for canning, hence the name. Hopped on the High Seas is 7% ABV and comes in at 70 IBUs.

Appearance: Dark copper, similar color to Jai Alai but a little lighter and translucent. Once again it has a nice head turning into some sticky lacing down the entire glass. Love the can as well.

Nose: Not super hop forward at all, definitely not what I remember from the other batches of this I have had. Some citrus but more of a really sweet sugary smell with some maltiness as well. Not what I was expecting from the nose at all.

Taste/Mouth: Get some tropical fruits, mostly pineapple before a real sharp bitterness crushes your palate. Lot of sweet maltiness in the taste as well. It finishes really dry, piney and resinous. From the nose I was not expecting such a hop bomb of bitterness from the taste.

Availability/Price: New batch, new hop so I think this is the last we will be seeing of this particular variety of this beer. The Hopped on the High Seas series is pretty readily available in states that get Cigar City distribution and at a similar price to Jai Alai it isn’t bad.

Overall: This beer was a huge letdown, especially after I have enjoyed the Simcoe and Kohatu batches of it. It was pretty hard for me to drink the two cans of it I had. Freshness wasn’t an issue as the can was less than a month old when I drank it. I think it must have just been this hop variety wasn’t working with it. I will continue to try this series when I see it but will definitely avoid anymore of this particular batch.